Kamisama no Memochou:Volume 1 Afterword

Before this, my friend once told me some good advice that felt somewhat unpleasant to me. ‘Not only your novels don’t have content in it, even the afterword is lame. Your topics every time would be empty and useless contents that have absolutely no connection with your novel, do you think anyone wants to read this? Stop dreaming. A rich dame wouldn’t appear and pity you just because you show how poor you are in the afterword, buy clothes for you and give you financial assistance.” Although I didn’t know why he knew my small dream in such detail, but his words always made sense, causing me to be unable to retort. And it was because I loved to show off useless information: for instance cup noodles that are soaked for twenty minutes would expand, filling your stomach easily; and they would make people lose their appetite because of its nasty taste, so a meal a day would be sufficient— and that caused the others to suspect that there’s a problem with my personality. So it’s about time to change the subject.

Then what should I write? My friend told me, the people who flip through books at a bookshop, most of them would read from the afterword. So I should introduce the contents of the novel in the afterword, and let people understand the contents in just a look. I agree. So that’s why many books write things about the contents in the afterword.

So here’s the contents of the book:

“We are a group of dropouts who are known as people who only graduated from middle school, don’t want to study, have no intention to work and are labeled NEETs by the government. We left the wings of our parents, and stayed at the ramen shop; but not cooped up at the ramen shop doing nothing! As long as we are free, and depending on how good the payment is, us NEET N Squad can do anything. Changing the possible to the impossible, crushing the calculations of the Labour Bureau! We are the jobless NEET N Squad!

‘I’m Shionji Yuko, a NEET leader. Everyone calls me Alice. My special skill is drinking a can of Dr. Pepper in one gulp and hacking into computer systems. If not for a genius commander like me, I wouldn’t have the ability to be the leader of these useless NEETs.’

‘I’m Kuwabara Hiroaki, everyone calls me Hiro. With my handsome appearance, women can’t escape me. Because I’m living a life of a gigolo, from bras to panties(as long as they’re lingerie), I could collect all of them.’

‘Hi, sorry for the wait! I’m Mukai Hitoshi, everyone calls me Major. My wiretapping and photo taking skills are top notch! You’re saying that I’m a Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure otaku? A military otaku? So? So what?’

‘I’m Ichinomiya Tetsuo, everyone calls me Tetsu the Pachinko Master. I could even beat up the police who are out patrolling, but don’t play dices with me!’

We are the NEET N Squad who don’t have any value for survival, bravely challenging the society that we won’t get anything to eat if we don’t work! If you dropped out too, remember to look for us!”

…… And that’s how it is. Furthermore, although he’s not in the summary, the main character is actually a male high school student.

Because some professional nomenclature often appears in my work, I’ll explain to the readers here—

‘NEET’ : The word is formed from the initials of the sentence ‘Not in Education, Employment or Training.’. The one that is most misunderstood is the first one’unemployed’. This has no relations with one’s salary. Just like me, who always show my poor financial status in the afterwords, dreaming of the day when a rich dame would feed me— although I have a salary, I’m still a NEET.

‘Dr. Pepper’: A beverage that was released in America in 1885, and is now common everywhere, and is the oldest carbonated drink of them all. In Japan, because there’s only five companies importing Dr. Pepper, including the Coca Cola Company, so the vending machines that sell Dr. Pepper are only in the Kanto, Niigata, Shizuoka and Okinawa districts.

‘Playing dices’: A game that was played in Japan since old times, the requirements are three dices. A large profit can be obtained if played as a gambling game, so it is against the hundred and eighty fifth law of Japan’s gambling law. I nearly went against the law too.

‘You won’t have anything to eat if you don’t work’: According to the twenty seventh law of Japanese law, each and every person has the rights and obligations to work. I’ve asked my friend in the faculty of law: I don’t need rights, so can I not have the obligation? After laughing heartily for twenty minutes, he told me: If you want to return the rights, then you must first relieve the obligations of living.

As the publisher said that I could write four pages for the afterword, so I feel that I can put in some simple and useful information in it. Although people would probably write useless things if they have spare pages, but there’s still one page, so I would like to say something meaningful.

About the starting point of the book: the idea of a ‘NEET detective’, I thought of it when I was chatting on a BBS at late light. The initial setting for the detective was a twenty eight year old jobless NEET man, even though he’s a detective, he’s reliant on the Internet and stays at home every day. If someone gave him a request, he’ll use Google to search or post question on major BBSes to search for an answer, a useless character.

Although I say this every time, this book could only be published with the help of many people. A special thanks to Y-san who proposed that I change the detective to a girl, the responsible editor, Yuasa(?)-sama who edited my drafts repeatedly, Kishida Mel-sensei who gave life to the characters, here I give them my greatest thanks. Thank you.

November 2006, Sugii Hikaru

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